I have misspent my life staying in luxury hotels. It started in 1975 on my post-college Eurailpass pilgrimage, when I stayed in a cheap place on the rue Gay Lussac in Paris—in a room with five other guys I didn’t know. Wandering the city, I stumbled upon the Hotel de Crillion, went into the lobby (despite my shabby dress), and decided that this was where I belonged. That determined my career. As the editor-in-chief of Departures, Expedia Travels, Luxury SpaFinder, and ForbesLife, I stayed in more than 200 luxury hotels, including the Crillion. And what I realized is how much depends on getting the right room. It doesn’t have to be the most expensive room—Presidential Suites are boring—but one with view, décor, or architecture that makes a stay worth the money. That’s what this column is about. I decode the hotel layout so you can be an insider when you book.

1/16/2013 @ 7:47PM19,350 views

Top Caribbean Resorts: Little Dix Bay in the British Virgin Islands

A few years ago, the management of Little Dix Bay decided to change the colors of the bathroom towels from sea green to dark blue. It wasn’t a matter of being au courant: Resort towels take a beating and dark blue happens to take it better than sea green. No big deal, right?

What happened next was an unusual form of town-meeting democracy. Long-time guests objected to the color change so strenuously that management rescinded the decision, says GM Dwight Sanford. It wasn’t a matter of taste for the guests either: They just wanted things to stay the way they were.

There is a small class of resorts in this world, Little Dix being one of them, that have achieved an unusual—and for management, both gratifying and challenging—relationship with their guests: high fidelity, to the point of having the same room at the same time each year, cost be damned, in return for a say—which can amount to a de facto veto—over changes in the property. In the guests’ mind—and they are inevitably a couple—they’re going steady with the resort, and that means that they always want the relationship to be “the way we were.”

I remember being at Caneel Bay back in the early 1990s, not long after the resort had floated the idea of putting air conditioners in the rooms. Not central air-conditioning, mind you, but window units that one could leave off if the idea of being comfortable in summer were despicable. I’ve never seen guests in such a swan-fluster. “Not in my room,” said one, as though he owned a condominium there.

In an era when resorts go to social-media, Bavarian-pretzel-pose extremes to sync with their guests, it’s often properties that were born at the dawn of modern luxury travel—Little Dix opened in 1964—that have achieved the guest marriage made in heaven. Pascal Deyrolle, GM of La Samanna, which opened in 1974, recently told me that his longtime guests exercise the same sort of vigilance. He has one couple that books room 122 for three months every year, and another that adjusts its March stay in order to get the room they love. At Hotel Guanahani on St. Barths, Sabine Masseglia, Director of Sales, Marketing, and Communications, has a couple that has taken room 22, an ocean-view pool suite, every year at the same time since 1991. At Little Dix, one guest gets Beach Front Cottage 7 in March or cancels. These guests are no longer best, preferred, or platinum; they’ve become stakeholders.

Little Dix Bay, like Caneel Bay, both now Rosewood properties, was the vision of Laurence Rockefeller, a travel seer. He founded RockResorts on one idea: Give guests a beautiful place in balance with nature. When Little Dix opened in January 1964, Manhattan phone exchanges had names. (The resort’s PR agency was at Circle 7-8141.) At the inaugural celebration, a military band imported from Anguilla played Sousa marches, God Save the Queen, and the Star Spangled Banner. “A gray-flannel suiter’s Tahiti,” one magazine called it, with a drop of sarcasm. High-season rates were $50 a night—and that’s full board.

Rockefeller invested in a feasibility study to determine the viability of wind and solar power at Little Dix because at the time Virgin Gorda had no power supply. In the end, he opted for a diesel generator and seawater distillation. (Odd factoid: The water was so pure that it was too soft to rinse off soap, forcing the resort to mineralize it.) When management tells you that the original Tree House rooms, hexagonal units on stilts, can’t be renovated because they’re booked steadily, you know that Rockefeller had 20-20 vision.

To be fair to Little Dix management, it is thinking of the future. Their guests-to-come have never heard of Circle 7 (or perhaps even of Butterfield 8). But then I think of how luxury travel today is so shot through with manufactured nostalgia. Whereas the rooms at Little Dix Bay are a bona-fide step back in time—in fact, only the Hillside Villas have in-room TVs. Comfortable they are, but not the palatial-bedroom, double-walk-in-shower, keep-to-yourself enclaves that landed in the Caribbean in the 1980’s. That’s one big reason why long-time guests are so possessive of the place.

Laurence Rockefeller’s idea was simple: You’re not here to stay in your room. Sometime in the 1980s, the converse came to rule resorts. It was a sea change in the luxury travel mentality. The guests who like Little Dix never got the memo, which gives this resort its singular low-key profile.

One thing has changed, though: The grounds are much more beautiful than they were when the resort opened, judging by the scrapbook I went through in the lobby. On opening day, the property was as bare as a new marine’s head. Now the rooms are buried in palms and sea grape trees—in fact, there are stretches of the long, crescent beach on which the sea grape trees have become palapas. It’s the fullness of time.

The resort has a gorgeous, crescent beach. But the lush grounds mean that the resort is largely a view democracy. The exceptions are second-story junior suites and rooms 113-120 because they’re set back on a rise. As the room numbers rise from 101, so does the elevation. The exception are the two Beach House Villas (see below), which are a stone’s throw from the beach.

Premium Ocean View

Premium Ocean View: A one bedroom with a terrace in a four-unit building. Upstairs is better than down, especially in 113-116 and 117-120 for reasons outlined above. All have a nice Malibu beach house period feel. Note that this year Garden View rooms are going to be reclassified as POV. I would go for 29-32, steps from the beach. One guest from Spain won’t come in January unless she gets 29 or 30.

Treehouse Cottages: The original rooms. These hexagonal units on stilts, clustered in the center of the resort, have a lounging area beneath them, in keeping with their Buckminster Fuller economy-of-space ethos. The bathrooms are functional, but the bedrooms have a cool period feel. And after all these years, the units are nicely buried in groves of sea grape trees.

Ocean Cottages: Created in a splurge of building in the mid-‘80s, these four-unit (two-over-two) buildings cluster toward the east end of the resort and were renovated in 2005-06. They offer a lot of privacy, hexagonal bedrooms, and can be interconnected, which is why they’re popular with families. But it’s a good walk to the dining room and the spa. 61-64 and 77-80 (at the very end of the property) are right on the beach.

Beachfront Cottages: There are eight of them, two cottages to a unit. They have hexagonal bedrooms, modest patios, and indoor and outdoor shower. Numbers 19 -20 seemed particularly attractive, as they’re buried in a sea-grape canopy. Number 110 has royal resonance, as this is the room in which Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip stayed when they visited on February 23, 1966. Numbers 7/8 are most requested because they are in the middle of the resort and on the beach.

Junior Suites

Junior Suites (37-44, 101-108): The newest rooms, the most modern rooms, easily the most luxe bathrooms—no complaints. They just don’t have the feel of the older rooms.

One-Bedroom Suite: There are only four, two to a unit. They’re low-slung, close to the beach, have a good size living room with stonewalls, which gives them a ‘50s California feel, indoor and outdoor showers, and walk-in closets. 14 and 16 are on the beach and closest to the restaurant and pool.

Beach House

Beach Houses:Dover House and Minton House are tucked away at the far west end of the beach. Screened by palms, they are family compounds (three-bedrooms each), with kidney-shaped pools, outdoor dining areas, a private path to the beach, and a short, albeit uphill walk to the resort’s gorgeous spa-on-a-cliff.

Hillside Villas: Up the mountain behind the resort, these four-bedroom units (two up, two down) offer birds-eye views of the ocean and are perfect for the families and couples. They have plunge pools, a grill and outdoor dining area, indoor- and outdoor-showers, and come with all kinds of a la carte services, among them a private chef.

FESSING UP: I was a guest of Little Dix Bay for two nights.

TO FOLLOW ME: You must open an account at forbes.com, and the best way to do that is at forbes.com rather than via a social media site. Wait for a confirming e-mail. Then, go back to my page and look for “the very little box” beneath my name—that’s how current followers have described it—and check it.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: The Saint Barths luxury hotel resume, all about Charleston, and the Zurich grand hotel that changed its identity.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.